The following is a rare point of view about Vatican II. It comes from a Memphis newspaper called Commercial Appeal. David Dault is a Catholic convert born after Vatican II who is now professor of Catholic studies in the Memphis area, and hosts a Sunday radio program in the Memphis area called "Conversations about Culture and Faith." It is the first time I have seen a lay person describe the post-Conciliar Church as 'a Church in transition', which is what it is. And which explains why Benedict XVI always says that the Church - and the faithful - have yet to fully assimilate (much less implement) the teachings of Vatican II. And why these teachings - from the actual documents, not from ideological 'spirit of Vatican I' readings - must constitute one of the basic resources for the Church in this Year of Faith.
Vatican II's imperfect,
undeniable impact
By David Dault
October 20, 2012
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.
Many priests here in the Memphis diocese, as well as Bishop Terry Steib himself, are old enough to remember not only the council, but what life in the seminaries and the priesthood was like before it was convened.
I was born in the 1970s, a few years after the close of the council. Indeed, I am part of the first real "Vatican II" generation of the Church. Folks my age and younger have no point of comparison, other than the stories we have been told. For us, the Mass has always been in our native language, and the priest has always faced toward us during worship.
This was the Church I joined, the Church I chose to join. As an "insider" to Catholicism now, I have to admit that it is quite different from how I imagined it when I was an "outsider," a seeker, a catechumen. Strangely, I think I imagined a Church that was simultaneously more ancient and more modern than the Church that actually exists.
I came to Catholicism in graduate school at Vanderbilt University, having spent several semesters reading St. Augustine and other Church Fathers. At the same time, I was in love with the social witness of many contemporary Catholics, from Dorothy Day and Roy Bourgeois to Fr. Richard Gross, the Jesuit chaplain at Vanderbilt who catechized me.
This mix of the conservative old and the radical new created a romantic vision of the Church for me. I wanted a worldwide body of ancient liturgy and progressive justice. Instead, I found a Church that was neither as conservative nor as modern as the one I imagined in my desires.
This is the legacy of Vatican II.
I have joined a Church that is in transition. Fifty years beyond the council, the Catholic faithful worldwide are still figuring out how to live these rearrangements and new interpretations of ancient truths and revelations.
I joined a conversation. Friends my age and younger who are "cradle Catholics" were born into this conversation.
Despite the appearances, Vatican II did not change the Church. It still understands itself to be the Body of Christ, and still understands that it is protecting and passing on a set of ancient truths revealed two millennia ago in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ.
But what Vatican II gave to Catholics is a new set of tools to aid in protecting and passing on these truths. The documents of the Second Vatican Council gave us new impetus, as individuals and as a Church, to talk to one another within our communion. Moreover, these tools encouraged us to engage in serious conversations with those outside the communion of the Catholic Church.
The years following Vatican II have seen the rise of hospitality and outreach to Muslims, Jews, and those of non-Abrahamic faiths both at the institutional and, often, at the parish level.
Furthermore, Vatican II called Catholics to renewed attention to the broken communion that lies at the heart of the Christian faith itself. Separated as we are from the Orthodox Church, and the many Protestant communities, the Church is chastened toward humility and the hope of eventual healing.
This is not the Church I wished for from the outside. But it is my Church, and I embrace it fully. Though as I teach its history to my students, and as I live within its communion, I am sometimes frustrated by what I find.
Perhaps this ability to be frustrated, and yet stay in communion and conversation, in unity, is the most important legacy of Vatican II.
Contrary to facile secular opinion, ecumenical councils necessarily take time - decades, at least - to have their teachings known. This is especially true of Vatican II, which did not proclaim any new doctrines, but laid down new pastoral guidelines for transmitting the Christian message to contemporary society.
Pastoral guidelines are notoriously subject to diverse interpretations, but none more so than the documents of Vatican II, which were largely ignored in the letter by the progressivist faction that was in a position to push their views aggressively in the mass media, which have been almost exclusively not just secular but specifically anti-Catholic since the 1960s. The institutional Church simply was not ready nor did she have the tools to counteract what came to be widespread public opinion [or 'published opinion' as Mons. Georg Gaenswein appropriately calls it] about Vatican II, namely, the progressivist interpretation.
Paradoxically, the age of mass media, with their increasingly awesome communications technology, did not really facilitate 'reception' of Vatican II, but has made it more difficult - because the media have become a showcase for peddling the progressivist factional interpretations of Vatican II that claim to represent 'the spirit of Vatican II'.
Quite frankly, this expression is objectionable if only because its proponents do not at all mean the Holy Spirit - under whose patronage all Church events take place = but their own self-serving 'spirit' or interpretation of Vatican II. Equally objectionable is this citation-by-rote of a putative 'spirit of Vatican II' by many commentators who, by all appearances, have not even bothered to read the actual Vatican II documents themselves (trusting cynically that the average reader would not bother to do themselves).
That is why one of the Vatican's key recommendations for the Year of Faith is a reading of the Vatican-II documents and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, as an ordinary Catholic with more than average and very active interest in Church affairs since April 19, 2005, and even having had a career as a journalist, I have to say that both the Vatican-II documents and the Catechism are not easy reading for me. It's more likely that I simply do not have the gift of grace possessed by the millions of devout Bible readers who seem to find no problem at all reading the Bible and deriving great strength from doing so. (In other words, I somehow allow my mind to get in the way of simply letting the words flood me without worrying that I do not understand much of the deeper messages that Scriptures contain, or in the case of most official Church tests, find them simply too tedious to read.)
However, as a practical measure - if the faithful are to 'discover' these texts during the Year of Faith, they need all the help they can get from their local parishes, priests and catechists - in terms not just of having ready access to the texts, but in study aids, such as presenting the Vatican-II documents in the form of a Q&A primer (whose citations they can then check out, if they wish, from the texts themselves), and utilizing the Compendium of the Catechism as the basis for study groups meeting weekly during the Year of Faith.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/10/2012 19:17]